There’s now a booming outlet for fanfic, including stories “portraying a near future where the Trump administration has criminalized selfies, radicalizing Kim Kardashian as a freedom fighter for women’s rights.” The Toronto startup Wattpad has moved the online subculture closer to the mainstream publishing world, and former AFC editor Rea McNamara has written a fascinating profile on the subculture and its transition. [NOW]

The Broad’s upcoming exhibition Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors is expected to be a huge blockbuster when it opens on October 21. The museum announced yesterday that they’ll be pre-selling all 50,000 tickets for the show online on September 1st at noon. I’d be worried about servers crashing from that volume of traffic. [Los Angeles Times]

In other L.A. news, Art Battle just took place in the Arts District and it sounds like it was terrible. It’s a live painting competition, which involved lots of paintings of pop culture things, dollar signs, hearts, and someone named “Art Barbie”. [artnet News]

Wow. Add this to the bucket list: the late French sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle left behind a 14 acre sculpture park in Tuscany inspired by Gaudi’s Park Güell. Her “Tarot Garden” is populated by giant goddess figures and a feminist takes on the tarot deck. This looks really cool. [Artsy]

Hong Kong high school students just set a world record for a display of 1,214 3D-printed sculptures of buildings from the city’s skyline. It kinda looks like a Won Ju Lim installation! (The 3D printing marathon was organized to celebrate the anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to mainland Chinese rule… which has been a less than great thing so far for the city’s pro-democracy activists, but that’s another story). [South China Morning Post]

Congrats to Cindy Cheng, winner of the 2017 Sondheim Prize of $25,000. (As a curator, I’ve worked with Cheng before and can vouch that she totally deserves it!) Here, Angela N. Carroll, Bret McCabe, and Cara Ober discuss all the finalists. [BmoreArt]

Paul Fusco’s photograph of mourners watching Robert F. Kennedy’s funeral train, now on view in Magnum Manifesto at the International Center of Photography, is Christian Viveros-Fauné’s must-see pick in New York right now. [Art Agency, Partners]

The NYT profiles Carter Burden Gallery, which only shows artists who are at least sixty years old. [The New York Times]

Brad Troemel is calling out Russian designer Vika Gazinskaya on social media. Her Spring 2018 collection, shown recently at Paris Fashion Week, appears to blatantly plagiarize his paintings. Gazinskaya has since admitted that Troemel inspired her work, but had not credited the references because she didn’t know his name. [ARTnews]

Heather Dewey-Hagborg upcoming show at Fridman Gallery sounds really creepy. The artist worked with Chelsea Manning while the latter was imprisoned. Photographs of Manning were prohibited, so to construct a “portrait”, Dewey-Hagborg extrapolated possible faces from a DNA sample. These are the results of that process. [U.S. News]

Whoa. South African artist Zanele Muholi filmed her Airbnb host throwing her friend, filmmaker Sibahle Nkumbi, down the stairs of an apartment building in Amsterdam. Nkumbi ended up in the hospital. The man is being charged with attempted manslaughter.[artnet News]

Cringe-inducing relational aesthetics idea of the century: Kristian von Hornsleth has attached GPS tracking units to homeless people in London, who can then be “bought” as “human Tamagotchi” and tracked by collectors for £25,000. Why are people so awful? [The Sun]

Xenia Rubinos’ “Mexican Chef” is the danceable social justice jam of the Summer. [YouTube]

“It’s curious that the intellectual and artistic community transforms its aesthetic unease or personal disgust into a longing for a type of patriarchal and pre-modern moral authority,” Cuauhtémoc Medina, chief curator of Mexico City’s MUAC, speaking about the controversy surrounding Jill Magid’s exhibition at that institution. (But really, such an apt observation on any art world scandal). Magid has turned the cremated ashes of legendary architect Luis Barragán into a diamond. This diamond is being offered to art historian Federica Zanco in the form of an engagement ring as a bartering chip (Zanco owns Barragán’s professional archives in her private collection in Switzerland, denying access to other scholars. According to rumor, the archives were gifted to her as an engagement gift decades ago). Magid’s intent is to liberate the archives to the trust of an institution for public access, but many see the project as disrespectful, tacky, sacrilegious, or even an act of cultural imperialism. The problem I identify here is the choice of an engagement ring. It contextualizes Barragán’s physical remains—in addition to his archive—in a form to suit Federica Zanco, adding insult to injury. [The New Yorker]

New York’s Institute of Arab and Islamic Art has opened with a four-person show that accidentally features all women artists. Dana Awartani, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Nasreen Mohamedi and Zarina Hashmi all deal in geometric abstraction and obsessively-controlled craftsmanship. It sounds like a surprisingly tame show given contemporary identity politics. [Hyperallergic]

This glass-and-concrete artists’ retreat upstate looks like pastoral utopia. Whoever the mystery artist is (a photographer who apparently is quite successful) should invite us up for a weekend! [Dezeen]

Wow. 103-year-old Margaret Ricciardi has been taking art classes every semester at CUNY’s College of Staten Island since becoming widowed in 1983. She still stands while oil painting. Now, she’s receiving an honorary Doctorate from the school. Not a bad way to spend one’s retirement! [New York Daily News]

Wassan Al-Khudhairi is taking over the controversy-plagued position of chief curator at St. Louis’s CAM from Jeffrey Uslip. She certainly has her work cut out for her. I can’t think of another institution as hated by its host city. Thankfully, Al-Khudhairi’s internationally-nomadic lifestyle seems to have given her plenty of experience listening and adapting to new communities. And maybe some global perspective can move the museum beyond its local tensions. [Riverfront Times]

Melania Trump and Ivanka Trump accompanied the president to meet the Pope. Their outfits were INSANE. Totally snatching these looks for our next goth ball. [People]

Baltimore artist-run spaces take note: if you’re a nonprofit or other tax-exempt organization, the state is handing out some healthy-sized grants this year, and the Bromo folks will help you with your application. [Bromo Arts and Entertainment]

“A serious dreamer, he welcomes without begging analysis, and takes analysts, even critics, seriously. The evidence of his generosity is that he doesn’t give his own interpretations. There are so many artists who think they can do my job. I let them. I like writing about art that leaves space.”—Sarah Nicole Prickett on the strange joys of watching David Lynch’s weird-AF-reboot of Twin Peaks as an art critic. [Artforum]

We snagged this GIF from Dezeen, because a standalone image it’s just so weird. A stoic woman in a bulky/futuristic outfit tears away packaging on her chest to unleash feathers and confetti. You’d think there’d be a really good story behind this one.

It turns out there are a lot of stories going on here, and I’m not sure any of them really make sense. The GIF is from Hussein Chalayan’s Autumn Winter 2017 show—a collection that’s somehow inspired by “universal personhood,” democracy, Greek folklore, and the “new, isolated individuals that the current world order is generating.”

The garments themselves kinda remind me of Star Trek: The Next Generation extras, which is a cultural point of reference that I guess communicates some of the above concepts? At any rate, I do like the idea of introverts wearing “IN CASE OF PARTY: BREAK GLASS” style tops full of glitter.

Or in the words of Chalayan:

“The Balkan era of Greek folk culture is used as a symbol of historical empowerment throughout the collection, connecting today’s sense of world citizenship to the ideals of personhood stemming from European Philhellenic sentiments of the early 19th century.”

OMG. Hasbro made a custom “Chewbacca Mom” action figure for the accidental Facebook celebrity. How has her “15 minutes” stretched this long?[TIME]

Great news on the housing affordability front: the New York senate has passed a bill banning short-term rentals of entire apartments. This means individuals or management companies can’t hoard apartments to sublet via Airbnb. That’s a trend that’s been well-documented as a major drain on affordable housing stock in places such as San Francisco and Barcelona. The downside is, if you live alone, it’s going to be a lot harder to sublet your already exorbitantly expensive place if you leave town for less than a month. Is this going to push the Airbnb hustlers across the Hudson into Jersey City? [The Verge]

Whoa! Kurt Cobain apparently made a bunch of visual art, and now it’s going on tour. Jeff Jampol runs a company that manages the estates of deceased rockstars, and he’s working with Courtney Love to put the exhibition together. [Vulture]

Curbed kicked off a comment storm over the weekend by asking readers what they thought the ugliest building in New York is. The takeaway: Curbed readers are not fans of modernism and have clearly not spent much time in Queens. [Curbed]

Here’s a nice Father’s Day art story: influential photographer William Eggleston and his textile-designer daughter Andra have teamed up to translate his abstract drawings into collaborative fabric prints. [CBS]

Anyone seeking to re-live the extraordinary excess of Art Basel Miami? We rediscovered this instagram post by AES+F over the weekend and haven’t been able to stop watching it. [@aesplusf]

I questioned whether Nan Goldin’s “Ballad of Sexual Dependency” really needed to be reviewed when I first saw the headline on artnet. It’s a great piece, but hasn’t everyone who reads that magazine seen that work 100 times over by now? It shows everywhere. But then I read Christian Viveros-Faune review and was reminded why we read reviews in the first place: they add another layer of experience to the work. From the review, “Sitting through Goldin’s 700-image slideshow felt, I realized just days ago, not unlike waking up to news of another mass shooting. Virtually overnight, people whose youth had been electric with possibility were cruelly no longer in the picture. Meantime, their photographic likenesses morphed from simple snapshots into something else: portraits that turned elegiac, hopeful, monumental even.” [artnet News]

Star Trek actor Anton Yelchin died this weekend in a bizarre car accident. The 27 year-old actor, who played Pavel Chekov in the new “reboot” films, was run over by his own car after he parked on a hill and was standing behind the vehicle. [CNN]

Dylan Schenker writes about the International Digital Arts Biennial and what happens when the programming and aesthetics of a machine butt up against the will of humans—a theme within the biennial. [Creative Applications]

Other creative industries are waking up to the crisis the art world has been justifiably freaking out over: gentrification is draining talent from the capitals of the culture sector. This piece does a pretty good job of outlining just how problematic the increase in housing costs can be, through the eyes of fashion designers. [Business of Fashion]

What does a face found in a pile of glue, an umbrella that gives you the finger when opened, and a dancing butt have in common? Primarily, they’re all images we found on our Instagram feeds. But perhaps more importantly, they’re the kind of images you’d expect to find if you landed in 150th wing of the Internet and discovered a very strange party going on. They’re weird, they’re fun, and they’re very creative.

And as a part of the “weird internet” many people bemoan has been lost, they’re a bit hard to find. But they’re out there, and we’re here to find them. From now on, every Friday we’ll be posting highlights from a social media account of a member from this society.

First up, @MarilynMansion, AKA Cameron Lee. The Toronto-based artist, curator and DJ promises, in his Instagram profile bio, “delicious deelites [sic] for your eyeballs.” Specifically, outfit selfies taken before he heads out the door to DJ one of his parties, which includes FEMINISTRY, a “Queer Femmes 2 The Front” monthly happening tomorrow night at Bloordale’s Holy Oak.

There’s a secret gallery in Harlem! The not-quite-legal space was “discovered” by Cy Gavin, and if you want to visit, you have to set up a meeting in a McDonald’s around the corner. The Can, as it is known, is presently showing work by ektor garcia and Michael Blake. [ARTnews]

When visiting the Weather Channel takes too many steps, there’s an even lazier way to check on the weather, the standalone site “Will it rain in …?” only asks for you to type in your city. [Willitrain.in]

Why are fashion exhibitions at museums more popular than art exhibitions? “The bottom line is that however much we love to look at art, everyone gets dressed in the morning.” [artnet News]

Bushwick gallery Norte Maar has moved to East New York. Will these pioneers launch a full-on art migration to the more affordable parts of the city? [Bedford and Bowery]

The Knockdown Center’s latest exhibition is designed to be interacted with—and viewed—via drones. The future is here, and it is fucking weird. [The Wall Street Journal]

In other news related to viewing artwork through the eyes of technology, here’s yet another article about Instagram’s increasing role in the art world. [The New Yorker]

The Shaw Festival has a new artistic director: British theatre and opera director Tim Carroll. The Niagara-on-the-Lake theatre festival is the second largest repertory company in North America, but has faced much criticism for its ongoing lack of diverse casting. Best known for his handling of Shakespearean works, Caroll will take over for the 2017 season and be at the helm of a $45 million building project. [The Globe and Mail]

“Here was something for our kids, all our kids—not just any kids’ show, but the kids’ show, created to give a head start to the kids who needed it the most, advantaged or not, and that was proven to work… And now it was being sold, not just to commercial television, but to hypercommercial television, a gold-plated premium channel that requires either cable or broadband and then a subscription fee on top of that.” No one is happy with Sesame Street’s move to HBO, and with good reason. [Time]

Berlin is finally getting its much-needed modern art museum. More than filling the need for more institutional exhibition space in the capital, there’s optimism that a new structure can fill in some of the gaps in the Kulturforum. The pretty desolate cultural district was built by West Germany on a site reduced to rubble in World War II to compensate for the loss of the Museumsinsel to the East. [The New York Times]

Speaking of in-city rivalries, Brooklyn’s booming skyline may soon have its answer to Manhattan’s mega-tower craze. A developer has amassed enough air rights in Downtown Brooklyn to construct a skyscraper on par with the Empire State Building. [Curbed]

London’s Whitechapel just announced its Music for Museums fall programming, and we’re pretty excited about the line-up: Florian Hecker! Rjoyi Ikeda! Hassan Khan! [Whitechapel Gallery]

Ethan Chiel talks to Olia Lialina about her ongoing restoration of old Geocities sites. [Fusion]

For $65, you can see Yoko Ono’s Plastic Ono Band perform at MoMA tonight. It’s one of several art-world activities coming up in the next few days. [Observer]

Ever wanted to cast your own dildo? A smithing group in Virginia just received a donation of “High quality steel in the form of used casting molds.” It is a giant box of dicks. [Facebook]

The original video for Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Relax” never made it to the air. Why? It’s set in a gay bar populated by leather daddies and drag queens gyrating in a bondage orgy. It’s 1000x better than the version that made it to MTV. This is what a mashup of Kenneth Anger and Jack Smith films would have looked like in the year 1984—an unfortunately bleak time for homophobic censorship. [via @JMGpix]

The man responsible for controversially putting the Guggenheim on the map is in expansion mode. Thomas Krens, former director of the Guggenheim, is proposing a new 160,000-square-foot museum, the Global Contemporary Collection and Museum, on North Adams’ Harriman-West Airport ground. Krens, who famously came up with the concept of Mass MoCA 30 years ago when he was director of the Williams College Museum of Contemporary Art, has entered lease negotiations with the Airport Commission, and is envisioning a massive for-profit museum with a collection of 400 works. It will cost an estimated ten to fifteen million dollars to build. [Artforum]

Just Kids, Patti Smith’s memoir of her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe during New York’s “Drop Dead” epochal era, is becoming a Showtime miniseries. Smith is on board as a producer and will co-write the script; no word yet on casting or when it’ll drop. (Don’t worry — we’ll make sure to let you know when there’s a casting call.) [artnet News]

In today’s weird “we live in the future” news, Björn Borg’s Spring/Summer 2016 collection, which will be unveiled at Stockholm Fashion Week, is inspired by the real-life plan for human colonization of Mars. [Mars One]

Why is Apple hiring so many fashion execs? While it seems as if it’s an attempt to push wearable tech, it’s more likely the post-Steve Jobs recasting of the company as a “lifestyle experience brand.” [The Business of Fashion]

“Rosé and Beyoncé: two pillars of modern womanhood that we could pack into a time capsule for future generations to unwrap, alongside an iPhone, maybe.” A so-called critical case history of the rosé, and how it transcended its basic roots to become the blushing wine of choice. [Vanity Fair]

Were you a teen on the Internet? Do you have some stuff online that you kinda-sorta want to delete, but just can’t? That’s where “Delete Your Account! Live” comes in—submit your past self to an open call devoted to performances, readings, and any or all media. Hurry, because the event takes place on August 26. [Delete Your Account Live via @willak]

Questionable quote of the morning: “If you go to Germany, every mechanic will have an opinion on contemporary art, whereas here people are afraid of looking uninformed, so they refrain from expressing their opinions.” Berliners, got some opinions on this? [Domain]

It’s that time again, when all your Twitter friends be like vote for me—it’s SXSW PanelPicker voting season. [SXSW]

Want to see that Perseid meteor shower tonight? Your viewing station will suck, according to this article, unless you’re in the countryside. Good luck, New York! [Business Insider]

The bust of Edward Snowden that was illegally installed and subsequently removed from a Brooklyn memorial earlier this year is on display at Little Italy’s LoMan Art Festival. [RT]

“Things That Anarchists Say to Me in Private But Never Repeat Publicly” is an anonymously submitted look at how leftist organizing becomes dysfunctional due to infighting and a set of impossible expectations for activists. Let’s just say that the author made a good call by choosing to remain anonymous—the think-pieces about privilege this could inspire would probably result in total ostracization from the cool kids. [Infoshop News]

When Brooklyn-based fashion designer BCALLA launched their Fall/Winter 2015 collection, they opted to collaborate with gay porn producers Cocky Boys for their promotional campaign. BCALLA is known for futuristic, barely-there, gender-bending garments in a cartoon palette. It’s pretty much the aesthetic opposite of most gay porn—a genre that tends to fetishize hyper-masculinity in settings like office boardrooms or abandoned warehouses. These sets, however—from designer Michael Burk—look straight out of the queer-camp classic But I’m A Cheerleader.

The result is a surrealist muppet orgy that’s closer to a very-adult children’s show than any other images produced by either the fashion or porn industry.

A number of years ago, at the height of the torture porn cycle, we discovered a parallel, if underappreciated, genre: the instructional makeup video. Both are premised on the remodeling of human bodies. Both offer grueling spectacles of metal on flesh.